Attorneys at Helena-based Upper Seven Law have been filing petitions for the release of dozens of immigration detainees.
The firm filed 37 last week and, as of midday Monday, it had presented six more to the court amid a flurry of paperwork.
The release of detainees came in a batch, too. Upper Seven announced last Friday that 24 “unlawfully detained individuals” had been released from the Cascade County Detention Center. More are expected to be released as the court considers more petitions, Andres Haladay, an attorney with Upper Seven, told Montana Free Press Monday.
Under court orders, federal authorities identified 53 people who met the court’s criteria for being wrongfully detained. Two were children — one as young as 9 — and have already been released.
All of this came after U.S. District Court Judge Brian Morris granted class status to people who were arrested by immigration authorities in Montana without warrants and remained in detention without any determination of whether they presented a flight risk. The class members have little or no criminal history and were often arrested during traffic stops initiated by local law enforcement agencies. Immigration laws didn’t require mandatory detention, the judge wrote, but were treated as such.
In court documents, detainees described being swept up in traffic stops and then placed in unsafe or uncomfortable detention conditions. One said he thought he passed out in the back of a box truck from the heat. Another said that a Border Patrol agent kicked him in the back before discouraging him from speaking to anyone, including an attorney.
Judge Morris concluded that federal authorities wrongfully arrested and detained these people. On Sept. 15, he issued another order declaring that the government violated the prior order by keeping these people in detention and approved release orders for the first 24 detainees days later.
In an emailed statement on Friday, a spokesperson for U.S. Customs and Border Patrol said the agency was awaiting individual release petitions and that it “is complying with the court’s order regarding release.”
The class certification for the Montana defendants was based on successful release petitions in individual cases such as that of Roberto Orozco Ramirez, a mechanic who lives in the small town of Froid. Judge Morris also presided over that case and lamented the lack of due process for the immigration detainees.
The use of release petitions, through a process called habeas corpus, has exploded during the second Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
“We have to start from the standpoint that a little over a year and a half ago, there was no need for any of this,” Haladay said. “Overzealous immigration enforcement didn’t exist.”
Haladay said that as Upper Seven and other law firms addressed habeas cases individually, detainees were being moved from state to state, prolonging the court process and straining defendants’ families.
This latest class action prevents the government from moving those people out of Montana.
“You can see the scale of how many people are having their rights violated and how many people need help and access to the courts who don’t get served through those one-offs,” Haladay said.
The release of 24 people on Friday coincided with the Cascade County sheriff’s announcement that a critical staffing shortage necessitated reducing the jail population. The Cascade County Detention Center has been a holding facility for many immigrants going through the court process, and federal detention contracts are a major source of revenue for the facility.
“I recognize the importance of our federal, state and local partnerships, but my first responsibility is ensuring the Cascade County Detention Center can operate safely,” Sheriff Jesse Slaughter wrote in a press release late last week. “We simply do not have enough personnel right now to safely maintain the population we have been housing.”
The court will continue to consider expedited release petitions in the class-action case, Haladay said. Morris asked the federal government to consider at least five petitions per day if it wishes to challenge the release of any of the detainees.
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